PLAZA CARSO

Plaza Carso

Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso is located in an area of urban transformation called Nuevo Polanco. It was inaugurated on 29 March 2011 by then President Felipe Calderón, with Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez and many other distinguished guests in attendance. The building’s avant-garde design consists of a silvery asymmetric structure whose molded forms recall the sculptural works of Rodin. It is 46 meters high and clad in more than 16,000 hexagonal aluminum plates. The only visible opening is the main entrance. Strikingly, the panels do not rest on the ground or touch one another, creating the impression that they are floating around the building. The semitransparent roof allows the upper floor to be illuminated by direct sunlight. The building was designed by Mexican architect Fernando Romero, in consultation with Ove Arup and Frank Gehry, and constructed at a cost of approximately 47 million Euros. Its architectural style has been compared to that of the Selfridges building in Birmingham and that of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Inside, the six floors of the museum are connected by elevators and an exposed spiral ramp. Visitors are generally invited to begin their visit on the sixth floor and to descend comfortably by the ramp, since the holdings are ordered thematically, rather than chronologically.

Exhibits:

Lobby - The Gates of Hell

Room 1 – permanent – Of Gold and Silver: Decorative Arts

Room 2 – permanent – Asia in Ivories

Room 3 – permanent – European Old Masters and the Art of New Spain

Room 4 – permanent – From Impressionism to the Avant-Garde Movements

Room 5 – temporary – Venice. Soumaya Museum Collection

Sala 6 – permanente – The Age of Rodin.

Plaza Carso

Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso is located in an area of urban transformation called Nuevo Polanco. It was inaugurated on 29 March 2011 by then President Felipe Calderón, with Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez and many other distinguished guests in attendance. The building’s avant-garde design consists of a silvery asymmetric structure whose molded forms recall the sculptural works of Rodin. It is 46 meters high and clad in more than 16,000 hexagonal aluminum plates. The only visible opening is the main entrance. Strikingly, the panels do not rest on the ground or touch one another, creating the impression that they are floating around the building. The semitransparent roof allows the upper floor to be illuminated by direct sunlight. The building was designed by Mexican architect Fernando Romero, in consultation with Ove Arup and Frank Gehry, and constructed at a cost of approximately 47 million Euros. Its architectural style has been compared to that of the Selfridges building in Birmingham and that of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Inside, the six floors of the museum are connected by elevators and an exposed spiral ramp. Visitors are generally invited to begin their visit on the sixth floor and to descend comfortably by the ramp, since the holdings are ordered thematically, rather than chronologically.